Simplifying GNSS Testing for Consumer Applications (Advertorial)

Learn how to simplify GNSS testing throughout the value chain from industry leaders, Spirent

Consumers expect ever higher levels of performance from their GNSS-enabled devices. To meet those expectations takes comprehensive performance testing at every stage: from chipset design and integration to checking the completed smartphones, tablet PCs, Personal Navigation Devices, location-aware shoes and digital cameras as they finally roll off the production line.

But performance testing can be complex and time consuming – and in such a fast moving market, a delay in development can easily result in lost competitive advantage, revenue and market position.

With over 25 years at the vanguard of the GNSS industry, Spirent fully understands these competing pressures. Our GNSS and hybrid testing systems offer unmatched functionality, but they also make the complex world of GNSS performance testing simple.

The Causes of Complexity
From the ever-changing nature of local GNSS signals and environmental conditions, to the logistics of field-testing GNSS chipsets and location-aware devices destined for global use, GNSS performance testing can seem to bring new complications at every turn.

In fact, the same techniques, tools and practices which support the production of the highest quality GNSS-enabled devices also minimise these causes of complexity and cost.

The Secret of Simplicity
Simple, effective GNSS performance testing relies on having the capabilities and features you need, as and when you need them. It also relies on taking complete control. By conducting performance testing under laboratory conditions whenever practical, it’s easy to remove the time-consuming complexity introduced by uncontrolled parameters and variables.

Spirent’s systems are designed to simplify testing throughout the value chain of a GNSS-enabled device. Simple testing means streamlined processes, faster compliance with industry and internal standards, lower costs, higher quality and reduced time to market.

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Simplicity through Simulation
Conducting meaningful testing, prototyping or benchmarking with an antenna pointed at a live sky is both hugely complicated and largely impossible. To return useful, comparable results, the conditions of any receiver performance test must be entirely repeatable – and live GNSS signals and environmental conditions are, by their nature, in a state of constant change. The value of live sky testing is further limited by the inability to test against GNSS signals that don’t as yet exist, but will nonetheless be available within the receiver’s service life.
For GNSS chipset designers and integrators, RF simulation is the both the simple solution and the only professional option.

RF simulators give research and development teams the power to test GNSS-enabled electronics under laboratory conditions, modelling self-contained scenarios and altering parameters to achieve a true and rounded understanding of performance.